Tabula Rasa

by Kitty Thomas

  “Stroke yourself. Feel how wet you are.”

  My fingers moved between my legs, rubbing circles over my clit in light butterfly touches.

  “Keep your eyes on mine,” he said.

  I was almost to the edge of my orgasm when he said, “Stop. Now, walk over to me.”

  I started to walk carefully across the floor, afraid of damaging it.

  “No,” Shannon said. “I want to hear the heels strike the floor and echo along the walls. You have to walk with purpose for that to happen. Go back and start again.”

  I went back to the spotlight I’d been standing under and hesitated.

  “Well?”

  “Sir, I can’t. These heels will mess up the floor if I walk any harder. It’ll put little dents in it.”

  Shannon smiled broadly. “And you’re afraid if you put dents in my floor, I’ll punish you.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re right about the dents and the punishment. Now walk. I want to hear it.”

  He wanted me to walk across the floor in such a way that ensured I would damage it and invite retribution. So I walked, exactly as he’d asked, across the polished wood to him. When I reached his side, he got out of the chair.

  “Don’t move. I need to inspect the damage.” He walked slowly across the floor and then slowly back, studying and counting and recounting the dents my high-heeled boots had made in his beautiful floor.

  “Twenty-eight,” he said finally. “I counted twice.” He shook his head as if disappointed. “Whatever will I do with you for putting twenty-eight dents in my floor? So many thrilling possibilities.”

  He moved in close to me, his lips brushing my ear. “I think we both know what kind of girl you are, don’t we?”

  Yes, I think we did both know. I could feel the excitement dripping down my thighs as much from the thrill of hurting his floor and knowing what it would mean as from the almost-orgasm. Shannon parted my legs with one hand, slipping a finger inside me. “My filthy little whore.” His voice was practically a growl. “Go get on the bed.”

  I crossed to the bed, walking as carefully as I could so I wouldn’t put any more dents in the floor.

  “Not that bed,” he said. “The bondage bed.”

  I turned toward where he pointed. The bondage bed was an elevated table-like piece of furniture covered in black leather. There were various shiny rings around it as well as a shiny silver pole affixed to each corner, allowing a wide variety of bondage options.

  “On your stomach,” Shannon said when I reached it.

  I climbed onto the table and lay on my stomach. He came up behind me and spread my legs and arms out wide. He produced leather cuffs from the box and put them around my wrists and my ankles over the boots. Then he connected them to rings at the edges of the bed. He carefully unhooked the back of the corset and opened it so that my back was bare. Then he flipped the skirt up so he could get a clear view of my ass.

  “You like being exposed this way, don’t you, you little slut?”

  “Yes, Sir.” I didn’t even think I was lying. I did like it. I liked the way the cool air flowed over my skin and then how just as quickly it heated again from his eyes on me.

  He took a blindfold from the box and covered my eyes. I heard him going back and forth across the floor and wasn’t sure if he was collecting items he planned to use on me or if he was just pacing. There was a deliberate, measured sense about his movements that suggested the latter.

  “Elodie... Elodie... Elodie...” he said it in a slow sing-song voice, dragging out the syllables. The way he said my name sent ice cold fear shooting through my veins and a trail of goosebumps moving down my spine.

  Finally, he stopped beside me, his lips again brushing my ear. “Elodie, I tried so hard to be a good boy where you are concerned. But then you had to come down into the basement. I wonder, did you think the other night was all I planned to do with you?”

  “No... No, Sir.”

  “Are you going to cry for me like a good girl? It will make me so happy if you cry for me.”

  “Y-yes, Sir.”

  I heard something light thud gently on the table next to me, and I flinched. Shannon just chuckled in response. “You’re terrified of me.” He didn’t say it like he was displeased about that fact.

  Somehow I had faith that whatever happened in here wouldn’t permanently damage me, that even if I couldn’t trust in some sense of humanity in him, I could trust that he wanted to keep doing this enough to be careful with me. And I knew from the length of time he’d had the white cat that Shannon was capable of caring for fragile living things.

  I gasped as his hands slid under my breasts. He stroked them for a moment, and then something hard and metal closed around each nipple.

  “Ow!”

  “Just wait until they come off,” he said, chuckling.

  He walked away for a moment, rummaging in the box, then returned. He pressed what felt like a rubber ball, about the size of his fist, between my legs. Then he secured it to me with straps which he wrapped around my body and buckled in place.

  A humming vibration began.

  Before I had time to enjoy that, he dragged something that felt like several long leather cords gently across my back.

  “Twenty-eight dents in my floor,” he said. Then I heard and felt him climb up on the table with me.

  I jerked in my bonds when his warm tongue stroked from the base of my spine all the way up between my shoulder blades. A moment later, the flogger came down hard across my back.

  “One,” he said with the kind of satisfaction I was sure only killing normally gave him.

  It was clear he intended to lash me twenty-eight times for the damage he’d insisted I cause to his floor. I gasped after each stinging blow, but I didn’t beg him to stop. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, and a fucked-up side of me that I was sure had done this before didn’t want him to.

  After the tenth lash he said, “Where are those tears, Elodie? Don’t disappoint me now.”

  I could only imagine what disappointing him could mean, so I stopped trying to be brave and strong and tough and I let each strip of leather cord coax the tears and pain out of me until I was crying so hard I wasn’t sure if I would be able to stop.

  “Good girl,” he said.

  When he was finished, and I had a stripe across my back for each little mark I’d put on his floor, he put the flogger down and started to caress me. First he ran his fingertips over my back where I could feel the tender flesh welting up. Then he moved a hand between my legs and pressed it over the vibrating ball I’d almost forgotten about. He pushed it against me, then released the pressure and rolled it around on my rapidly moistening skin. He used the vibrating ball to massage me until I came in a cry more forceful than anything that had come before.

  After the pleasure had run its course, he turned the ball off and unbuckled the straps and took it off me, then I felt him enter me from behind. He was rigidly hard, my tears having the same effect on him and his anatomy that they’d had the night before. He drove into me in a kind of frenzy for several minutes while the music in the room blanketed us in drumbeats and some exotic wind instrument.

  When he came, his weight fell heavy against me for a moment. Then he rolled off me. The blindfold came off then, and I could see he lay next to me, his eyes locked with mine, staring intently. I would have looked away except that I couldn’t turn my head easily the way I was bound. He brushed my hair out of my eyes.

  A few moments passed like this, and then his hands moved to my breasts again, and he removed the clamps. The pain was as exquisite as promised.

  “Fuck, Shannon!” I shouted.

  He struck my ass with his palm. “Sir,” he corrected.

  But I couldn’t imagine screaming “Fuck, Sir!” at him would have been much better.

  He moved behind me again and massaged a soothing gel into my back, then he refastened my corset and pulled my skirt down. He uncuffed me and then he carried me upstairs to
my bedroom and put me to bed.

  ***

  That night, I had another nightmare. Only this time it was different. It wasn’t the park. It was a memory from before the park. I was studying for my Master’s degree in Botany at the University of Washington. I was in the biology lab, my professor standing behind me. He was far too close for my comfort, as if he didn’t believe in the concept of personal bubbles.

  His hands slid under my shirt, and then underneath my bra to stroke my nipples. He wasn’t even subtle. He had no shame about the brazen act at all. He acted as if he were entitled to this, but he wasn’t. This wasn’t a repeat occurrence. It was something new. And the boldness of the act shocked me.

  I pulled away, trying to shift out of his grasp, trying to pretend what was happening wasn’t happening. I wasn’t into Professor Stevens. Not that way. I respected his mind. I’d been thrilled to get to study with him, but this had not been a part of the course work I’d signed on for.

  He smelled of scotch and cheap cigar smoke as he leaned in close to my ear. “Elodie, come on now, we all know what kind of girl you are.”

  From the moment he’d walked in on a private sex party a few of the students had thrown together at one of the frat houses—one I’d been at—I’d been his number one target. Because certainly if I liked to be tied up and whipped and fucked by half a dozen frat boys, I must have no morals at all. I must have no limits. There must exist no man that I could legitimately say no to. How could I even have that right anymore when I’d said yes so many times?

  If I said no, then I was just being selfish and terrible because, of course, I was that kind of girl. In my grandmother’s generation that kind of girl had been as tame as a woman who would blow her own husband. In my mother’s it had been the girl who’d slept with a couple of different men before marriage. In my generation it was the freaky ones. That bold, open freakiness made unsavory men believe that it was all up for grabs and that the word no, simply wasn’t allowed if you were that kind of girl.

  “Stop it!” I said more firmly, pushing his hands away. This man had the power to halt my degree in its tracks. He could fail me, and then the only way I’d have a hope of salvaging my future was if I reported him. But wouldn’t that be convenient? It would be my word against his, and with the stakes involved, he could just say I was trying to get a grade I hadn’t earned by threatening his career.

  And since that party had become common knowledge all over the school, I’d be treated like the whore who cried wolf.

  “Don’t worry, no one will walk in on us,” he said. As if that were the problem rather than his abuse of position and the general grossness of this whole thing. He wasn’t even some sexy youngish professor. He was old enough to be my father and short and balding and not exactly fit. How could he pretend surprise that I didn’t want him or this? Some men only accepted no from a woman who kept her pussy under total lock and key. Because why should a few men get to have fun with you but not all of them? Forget the fact that the frat guys I’d fucked had looked like underwear models and had been my age. Nope. One dick gets in, they all get in.

  I used every bit of mental power I possessed to... WAKE UP, wake up right now, Elodie! Wake up!

  My heart beat wildly as I bolted upright in bed, taking in the darkness of my room in Shannon’s house. It was safe and quiet. I didn’t even question why I felt safe in Shannon’s house. I did. And that was that.

  I wasn’t sure if I remembered everything about my past or not. But I remembered enough. I wondered if the earlier escalation of the games with Shannon had triggered the unlocking of my most powerful and vivid memory before the accident. I was beyond grateful that I’d woken before having to live it over again. My professor had taken me to a second location. Because of course he had. No wonder that idea had pulsed through my mind randomly even before my memory had returned.

  The campus had been largely shut down for the holidays. And because I didn’t have anything in the way of family to go home to, I’d stayed behind in the lab to catch up on some extra work. It had seemed baffling to me at the time why he’d chosen to switch venues. At least until we’d gotten to his house.

  He hadn’t killed me, obviously, but he may as well have. Because he liked the kink, too. And if he liked the kink, and I liked the kink, well then what was the problem? Fuck my agency. I was that kind of girl, goddammit! When he’d finally let me go the next day, swearing up and down that if I told anyone, nobody would believe a word out of my filthy whore mouth, I’d packed my shit up and left. At least everyone was away for the holidays, and I wouldn’t have to answer any uncomfortable questions.

  I’d left my schooling in the dust, afraid to even try to transfer somewhere else, afraid his vengeance would follow me. I’d moved to Florida and just lived off the money my biological father—who I still didn’t know—had given me. He’d been generous. He’d set me up for life. He’d even paid for school above and on top of the money he’d dropped into an account for me.

  I had thought at the time if only I knew who he was, maybe he would have done something about the professor so I could finish my education, but I was sure he wouldn’t want to get entangled in my frat house sex scandal—not if he couldn’t even handle the shame of having fathered me in the first place.

  In Florida, I’d met Trevor. On paper, he’d looked great. Good-looking successful doctor. But something had felt wrong about him early on. I’d been trying to forget about what happened at school. I didn’t want to think there was something broken or wrong about me now—something I couldn’t get back. When I ended things with Trevor, not long after they began, he started to stalk me. I hadn’t gotten a restraining order because, hell, what good would that do? It would just piss him off more, and it wasn’t as if that piece of paper was a magical shield that could protect me.

  The most fucked-up part of all of it was that the accident that landed me in the hospital involved Trevor chasing me in a car like the crazed lunatic he clearly was. And then, I’d been entrusted to his care in the hospital because no one had known any better.

  Trevor’s car hadn’t been involved in the accident. I’d gone off the road. And beyond that, everything was a blank. The brief flash of him in the white room must have been when I’d woken in the hospital and hadn’t remembered anything. That must have been when he’d put his plan in motion.

  I’d never fallen in that pirate ship. Trevor must have carefully placed me there and waited for me to wake up into the sinister reality he’d manufactured for us. All those scars... they’d been fresher than I’d wanted to admit when I’d first caught my reflection in a mirror. Probably injuries I’d sustained in the crash. And that strange weakness when I’d woken up in the ship... it was probably from the coma and not using any of my muscles for however long I’d been out. I was sure someone had moved my arms and legs to try to keep atrophy at bay, but I still would have needed physical therapy. No wonder I’d felt so weak and helpless and confused when I’d woken in the forest.

  I scooted back down under the covers and tried to close my eyes again. I’d had nightmares before at Shannon’s house, and I’d gone back to sleep. But somehow I knew this was different. Before, I’d been a broken glass object held together by the glue of my lack of memory. But now there was no glue. I wanted to go back to before, when all my mind held were missing, gaping holes of lost stories. I wanted the blank slate again. It was safe and comforting.

  When I closed my eyes now, all I could see was that night with Professor Stevens in his house, tied down to a bed in his basement... his belt tearing through belt loops and then leaving red welts across my bared flesh. No wonder the first night when Shannon had tied me to his bed had caused that sense of panic I couldn’t quite nail down. It was as if a whisper of the memory was already working its way through, trying to protect me from a repeat experience.

  In some ways, I was grateful things had moved forward with Shannon before I was in possession of my memories. After, I’m not sure I would have had the c
ourage for it.

  I got up and slipped out of the room. Down the hall, the white cat lay just outside Shannon’s door. She hissed at me as I got close. I couldn’t bring myself to open the door. I was afraid of how he might react to me barging into his private space.

  If I didn’t want him, would that change anything? Would he just do the same as my professor had and fuck me for being that kind of girl in the first place?

  But hypotheticals hardly mattered. The fact was that I did want him. I wanted him so much it made my teeth hurt. I’d never wanted another human being the way I’d wanted Shannon. And now that I had my history back, I could say that with some authority.

  I thought back to our last time together earlier in the night. I tried to determine if his body inside of mine had created any lasting trauma... in light of my new memories. But I couldn’t find any. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to go in there. Shannon hadn’t invited me to start sleeping in his bed like his girlfriend or anything. Whatever thing he felt for me, it was something new to him, and visiting him with my problems would likely only push him further away. After all, feelings were only really desirable if they were good, and Shannon was still so new at any feelings at all. Maybe he would determine human entanglements were far too much trouble—that I was too much trouble—and just shut the whole thing down.

  Finally, the white cat became annoyed with my pacing back and forth in indecision to the point that she was ready to do something about it. She stood up and let out that long, insane Emergency Broadcast Meow—the one that could probably wake the dead with its length, volume, and insistence.

  Shannon stomped over to the door and ripped it open. “What!?”

  I jumped, and the cat fled.

  His tone softened. “Oh. What is it, Elodie?”

  I shook my head and turned to go back to my room. “Nothing. It’s... it’s nothing.” What the hell was I going to say to him? I didn’t know even now the full extent of what he wanted from me. But I was pretty sure what he wanted wasn’t to have to become my therapist. He wouldn’t know what to do... how to erase this, fix this, make it all go away. Assuming he wanted to.